Things are collapsing in the last installment of The Book of Dust, the second of the author's masterful trilogies set in a realm that seems, in this volume especially, as a intense and slanted version of our own. Establishments are failing, or reassembling themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from authorities, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the vaults of conglomerates, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, silently, very subtly", says trader a trader character, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and durable are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and Lyra's Journey
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which continues where the previous book left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's last excursion into the elaborately built, endlessly enchanting world he first introduced 30 years ago, with the launch of the first trilogy. It's a world whose terrain aligns with that of the real world, but whose past tacks and jibes with ours; where the people appear and reason and behave like us, but are paired by animal souls, beings in creature form; where the air are teeming with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but below, transports are caught and drinks is sipped, and middle-aged scholars carry fancy shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which Pullman began this trilogy, is now a young woman: still distinctly the prickly and tenacious protagonist of the earlier books, but older, melancholic, more cautious, more doubtful. This limitation is amplified by her division from her soul companion, Pan – but it was also, ironically, the catalyst which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
Pan's decision to depart in quest of that innocent part of Lyra which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of the prior book, which saw the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across Europe and into the mountain region, facing with amazement and risk on the way. But from the start, profound shifts were in play, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the church's controlling power, and the author's deliciously chilling representation of rigid, bureaucratic wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. The antagonist – our protagonist's relative, who faults her for his family member's death – has worked himself into the office of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is determined on using his fresh power to expand the institution's rule. Malcolm Polstead, who carried infant the heroine to security along a overflowing river as an 11-year-old in the prequel, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in espionage: he is dispatched to Geneva to learn more about his aims. And underlying all of this is the enigma surrounding the uncommon and costly rose oil which manifests somehow to be the origin of a social and economic upheaval spreading out from that area. The extract is seen by various factions as a marketable product, by alternate groups as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by others still – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an affront that must be obliterated. The dilemma of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or preserved is becoming urgent.
As in His Dark Materials, the heroine's deeds, and her fate, are revealed to be deeply linked with the future of the universe
In the previous volume, these narratives ran broadly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in the original series, her actions and her destiny are revealed to be deeply entwined with the future of the realm. Her private mission to rejoin with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the central struggle in a larger conflict with an oppressive government which, as such regimes always have, is seeking to suppress independence of thought, creativity and art: all the internal, resistant ways in which humans can be liberated.
Dimensional Rifts and Philosophical Struggles
The story starts with the discovery of a set of unusual fissures in the makeup of the planet's sky: gateways that look to open into alternate realities. A particular window appears to be the source of the much debated botanical substance. The Magisterium, with Delamare at its leadership, classifies these portals as a problem to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to move from strict rationalism and return to intuition, however, her conviction that these locations must be defended – that their significance and what they offer is somehow vital – strengthens. "Dust, or the extract, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The scene for a poetic struggle between naivety and experience is established.
Narrative Pacing and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
